Building Bhakashal – Session Report

We had our third session for a new group this week. I was approached by a group asking if I could teach them how to run games. I decided to spend 4 sessions just running the game for them, and 2 sessions discussing how to run games rather than playing them.

They have been sent to a remote island to retrieve a renegade warlock who stole from his powerful master. Last session they discovered that kobolds (with axebeak mounts) lived on the island and they established an alliance with them. Rather than fight them, they shared a meal with them, exchanged some goods and information, and learned a lot about the denizens of the island. When we finished last week the party Spider (thief) barely escaped being eaten by an intelligent plant, we picked up from there.

A reminder that this particular group has asked to be taught “how to run a game”, so I will gloss a lot of what happened with comments about the process of instructing them about the play of the game.

First thing after slaying the plant the player of the party Mercenary (fighter) suggested they should look around the plant for loot that “may have been dropped by former victims”.

This led us to have a discussion about “lairs”, e.g., how if a monster or animal flees combat, one option is to try and track them and find their lair. In this case they were lucky as the monster in question is stationary. They spent some time digging into the ground around the plant and looking through it’s guts and found some gold coins, but nothing else.

The kobolds had told the party where the warlock they were searching for had been spending his time, so they had an idea of where to look. I told them they had a 1 in 8 chance of finding what the warlock was working on, and a 1 in 12 chance of an encounter, check both every turn.

They knew there was a green dragon in the area, so they were a bit tense about that!

After an hour of searching they hit paydirt, finding a door made of metal bars with a lock hidden behind some trees and brush. They saw that this door led to a rough-hewn corridor that descended into darkness.

Their first dungeon!

They found the door was locked, so the thief got to try her skills for the first time. She took out her tools and spent a turn finessing the lock, and it opened!

Then they descended.

However, they put the party fighter in the lead, she was a human, and had no infravision, so she could see about a foot or so ahead and that was it.

This produced delicious fear!

They decided to go without torches at this point as lighting torches in the dark would make them easy to spot.

I informed them of the dimensions of the corridors, and the party fighter, who had a really long bastard sword, asked if it could be used in a confined space.

They were starting to get the idea, the environment determines the constraints, so you have to ask questions or find out the hard way. I told them that the game has “space required” stats for all weapons, so we consulted the tables to see.

The dungeon was a maze, so they got out a piece of paper and began to map to keep track of where they were going. I suggested just doing lines for corridors and keeping it simple.

As it happens, they made choices that led them to the center of the maze. That was pure luck, as there were many branching paths that could have led them to traps or to monsters, but instead they arrived at the central room.

There was a pool full of black, metallic liquid in the center of the room, surrounded by 8 statues of warriors, all of the statues faced the pool. There was a low, ambient red light in the room that cast no shadows. For some reason the ambient light freaked them out and they insisted on lighting a torch. They asked about the statues, and I told them they would have to investigate them. They walked over to the pool and dropped a coin into it.

“The coin disappears from view as soon as it goes under the water, swallowed up by the black, metallic liquid.”

That they did not like!

They went over to the statues. They found that each statue had the same symbol carved into the stone at their feet, it was three lines within a circle. One of them asked if their character would know what that means.

I told them that their thief had a read languages percentage and could try that to see if the symbol was familiar, but it came up blank. Then I mentioned that Warlocks in Bhakashal are also sages, so they should check to see if the party warlock had a relevant area of knowledge.

It ends up her major field was “signs and symbology”, LOL.

So, she had a chance of knowing what this symbol was, and she rolled it at the table.

Huzzah!

The symbol meant “bound”

That got them talking.

They decided since the statues were all facing the pool, and they all had the same symbol on them, that they were likely binding something in the pool.

Then the question became, “should we try and free it, or get out of here”.

At this point I told them that there are spells that can help with situations like this, Augury, Contact Other Plane, Legend Lore, or they could consult a sage, or they could talk to the kobolds and see what they knew. But they didn’t have any of those spells, there were no sages on the island, the party warlock’s area of expertise didn’t help, and (although they didn’t know this) the kobolds knew nothing.

In short, they had to decide for themselves.

That produced some conversation, they were convinced that they should have SOMETHING in their toolkit that would solve this conclusively. I informed them that this isn’t the way the game works, sometimes you have what you need, sometimes you have to wing it. They were insistent that I should just GIVE them something that would help them out. They even said that their warlock having Signs and Symbology as her major field was something I did on purpose to help them with the symbols in this encounter.

But as I told them, I drew the three PCs for this adventure out of my file folder at random, it was just luck. This was a great opportunity to discuss how, in the kind of D&D that I run, and in old school D&D in general, the goal is to make due with what you have, not for the referee to give you what you need when you need it. That way, as I told them, when they win its because of THEM, and if they lose, it’s because of THEM, not because I tweaked things either for or against them.

So, after a long conversation, they decided to try and free whatever was in the pool. Since there were 8 statues that all had the rune on them, they figured destroying any one of the statues or runes would be enough to break the binding spell.

As it was.

The party Mercenary bashed one of the runes until it was marred.

Then, the ambient red light intensified and dimmed over and over, and a shadowy form rose from the pool. It was humanoid in shape but made of shadow stuff.

That produced a gasp of surprise.

“At almost the same time as the creature emerges from the pool, you hear four distinct noises, you can’t place their exact location or distance, but their sound carries through the confined spaces, you hear what sounds like roaring flame, some sort of slithering noise, a crackling sound, and the sound of wind.”

They weren’t sure what that meant, but they panicked! Still, the shadowy form was their immediate concern.

In Bhakashal, monsters don’t just attack every time, instead, you roll to see what would happen.

If you freed a shadow from centuries long binding, what would it do first? Would it attack those who freed it? Would it be so hungry that it attacks the first thing it sees? Would it be so desperate to be free of it’s prison that it flees immediately to avoid being bound again? I farm out decisions like this to the dice. I announce the options, “On a 1-3 the creature attacks you, on a 4-5 it flees, on a 6 it hovers and watches you”

Then I roll in public, a 4.

“The creature leaves the pool (the black metallic water having disappeared as it emerged), as it does so it becomes a shadow that moves across the floor, as if cast by a body that isn’t there. It travels to the exit opposite the party and disappears down the hallway, all the while screeching what sounds like the word, ‘free’.”

By now they are learning a key aspect of the style of play that I’m promoting, namely that it tries to create a degree of impartiality, the referee sets the odds, but the dice decide the outcome.

As soon as the shadow fled I told them this,

“The sound of slithering and wind gets softer, receding into the distance, the sounds of roaring flame and crackling, however, get louder.”

At this point the party fighter goes over to the pool to see what is there now that the water is gone, and she sees a sword! She grabs the sword without hesitation, and they decide to book it as fast as they can.

At that point I go round by round, they flee, and every round I tell them if the sounds are getting closer or further away. I have a map in front of me, I mark off the requisite number of squares each round they flee and the requisite squares for the two monsters that are heading their way (two monsters chose to flee the maze, two to head towards the center).

The noises were getting closer as they fled, they didn’t know what was coming, and they were freaking out. One of them was scouring her character sheet for spells or items to help, another was just panicking.

Then, one of them decided to ditch their torch so whatever was coming would home in on that and maybe miss them entirely.

They were thinking beyond their character sheet, excellent.

The way the maze was laid out and the way they ran they managed to make it out of the maze before the monsters go to them, and they slammed the gate shut, locking it behind them. They proceeded to a nearby standing of trees and watched. A firedrake appeared first, it bashed it’s head against the bars of the door to no avail. Then it directed it’s fire breath to the door.

Then the Hoar Fox showed up.

The two looked at each other but did not attack. Then the Hoar Fox breathed on the bars, making them icy cold. They alternated until the bars shattered and set them free. I rolled to see what they would do, and both fled.

Then the shocker emerged (the carrion crawler, the sources of the slithering sound, remained in the maze), it saw the party, I rolled, and it headed towards them to attack.

“A humanoid figure, apparently made up of lightning and the source of the crackling sound you heard, approaches you.”

At this point the party warlock decided she was going to cast one of her spells, Sjin’Saar’s Corrosive Decay. This spell, like a Fireball in geometry, causes ferrous metals to corrode instantly upon a failed save.

The player asked me, “How would this spell impact a creature made of lightning”

And that was great opportunity to discuss another aspect of the game, at the table rulings.

The rules don’t cover everything, so sometimes you have to figure it out on the spot. In Bhakashal, the recommendation is to collaboratively come up with possibilities and vote on them together. Everyone has to agree to move forward. A few options were discussed:

1.        It would do nothing

2.        It would do half damage

3.        It would destroy the creature utterly

4.        It would knock it unconscious

5.        It would temporarily disrupt the creature

We voted and settled on 5, and the Shocker flickered in and out of existence several times. I then made a morale roll, and the creature fled.

At that point they decided to go back to the kobolds and compare notes. They found their mounts, which were tied up a distance away and being attended to by the warlock’s henchmen, and they rode towards the kobold caves. When they came out of the forest, I told them this,

“As you emerge from the trees  you see a startling sight, four kobolds, mounted on axebeaks, are surrounding the shadow which fled the maze ahead of you.”

At this point they were enamored of the kobolds and wanted to help, the Warlock and the Spider were hesitant to attack for fear of hitting an ally, but the Mercenary just sneered and charged, her recently discovered sword in hand. As soon as she held the sword and charged to attack, she became aware that the sword was magical, and could either aid her attack or her defense, at her will.

Unbeknownst to her, she had found a +4 Defender!

She chose to put all of the magical mojo into attacking.

Before she could reach them the shadow attacked one of the kobolds, I described it as follows:

“The shadowy form collapses to the ground and slides across it, two dimensional as it moves swiftly across the grass, when it reaches one of the kobolds it reverts to humanoid form and passes through the mounted figure… and the kobold screams, changing into a shadow.”

They instantly understood the implications, each victim of the shadow could become another shadow, and they would be outnumbered in short order.

The Mercenary arrived, she swung her sword and hit the creature, almost splitting it in half. The shadow tried to attack her and missed.

She pulled on the reins and came back around for a second time, this time she rolled a critical, and opted for two attacks. The first attack finished off the original shadow, the next attack finished off the second shadow in one strike.

Her dice were on fire, and they were all very happy about it.

We stopped there.

It was a great session for learning, we covered a lot of rules and situations that will come up regularly at the table, and they saw how much of the process is farmed out to the dice. They also discovered that you don’t always have what you need so you have to improvise, and that some problems aren’t amenable to what is on your character sheet.

What they don’t know yet is the guy they are after is dead, slain by the hill giants that live at the other end of the island. I think they are going to head there next, where they will quickly learn that thrown boulders are extremely deadly!

It will be epic.